A few years ago, Boulder's Katie Weiss started teaching herself how to code. When that got a bit lonely, she sought out different groups and meetings for new coders, only to find that she was often the "only woman in the room," she said.

So last August, she created a Denver/Boulder chapter for Women Who Code, a group through Meetup.com for women in all stages of practicing web development and other computing skills.

At that first meeting, 12 women showed up. Almost a year later, the group has 320 members.

"I was just amazed that they existed," Weiss remembered thinking of the other women at the group's first meeting.

Though there may be some women lurking in the shadows like the ones Weiss found, statistics show that women are still vastly underrepresented in computing and technology jobs. At this week's Boulder Startup Week, a panel titled "Boulder 'Hearts' Women in Tech" will discuss the lack of diversity in Boulder tech jobs.

Boulder-based nonprofit National Center for Women and Information Technology found that, in 2009, 18 percent of undergraduate computing and information sciences degrees were awarded to women, down from 37 percent of those degrees in 1985.

Though women hold 56 percent of all professional jobs in the United States, they hold 25 percent of information technology positions. A 2012 survey in the United Kingdom found that 6 percent of British developers were females. Those same women reportedly earned nearly $5,000 less than their male counterparts per year.

The lack of women in computer science jobs is quickly becoming a very real labor force supply problem. By 2020, The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a 30 percent growth in computer science jobs. Analysts say that as of right now, employers will be able to fill just one third of the 1.4 million tech jobs available by 2020. In Boulder, employers are predicted to fill just 24 percent of open positions.

If they don't find a way to train and hire more women, employers won't have a chance at filling all the open positions. Not to mention that, but tech companies with more women on management teams have a 34 percent higher return on investment, the National Center for Women and Information Technology found.

"Women represent an untapped talent pool for technology innovation," said Jenny Slade, the center's spokeswoman. "Are you really getting the best innovation if you're only soliciting from one gender?"

'It just isn't a fit'

Weiss, the consulting services manager at Gnip in Boulder, doesn't code at work. But that doesn't mean she's not interested in computers, mobile and web apps, and technology in her free time.

"I have never been a full-time programmer," Weiss said. "I've never been asked to be a programmer. I fall into the category of women who enjoy learning this stuff, but know that, as a full-time career, it just isn't a fit."

The fit. It's a word that gets thrown around a lot by people explaining the "where are all the women?" problem.

"Women are social learners, and in classic engineering environments, there's a lot of, 'Go figure it out on your own,'" Weiss said. "There's that stereotype of programmers who like to code all day in their basements and don't see the light of day. That's not how the female programmers that I see roll."

And women with kids often face even more challenges, even beyond those that mothers already face in the workforce. While writing code for a project, everything can "blow up" for no reason, just before deadline, Weiss said. Mothers can't stay until midnight fixing code -- who will pick up the kids from school?

That time crunch may also prevent more women from making it to an interview. Recruiters often look at an online portfolio through the website GitHub.com, Weiss said, and if women have been out of the job market raising a family or are new to computing, their portfolio is probably pretty bare. Often, they get overlooked.

And the computer gender gap starts even earlier. The National Center for Women and Information Technology found that young women comprised 46 percent of Advanced Placement calculus test-takers, but only19 percent of AP computer science test-takers.

"A lot of women who have engineering and math skills also have social skills," Weiss said. "There are some very well-meaning teachers and parents who direct those women into non-engineering careers. We're coming to a point where we're realizing there are different kinds of programmers. I hope we get beyond that stereotype of the guy in his basement."

Because women come to computer science later in life, often they didn't spend their childhood tinkering with computers and circuit boards like their male counterparts.

Quick Left CEO Ingrid Alongi studied gender studies in college, and found her way to computer science in grad school before co-founding Quick Left, a Boulder web and mobile application design company.

Coming to computer science later can translates to a lack of confidence in themselves for women, Alongi said. During Quick Left's hiring process, Alongi began to notice that women weren't making it past the first interview, even if on paper they were qualified.

"We were inadvertently passing them off because they didn't show the confidence that the guys had," Alongi recalled.

After that, Quick Left started using a screening process free of human bias during hiring, a software called RoundPegg which helps identify if potential employees would fit into the Quick Left culture.

'It's not the Mad Men era'

The National Center for Women and Information Technology, which is housed on the University of Colorado campus, works with employers to make their hiring practices more fair and appealing to women. The organization also works with K-12 schools and universities to make classes more applicable to women's lives.

Spokeswoman Slade pointed out that women earn 60 percent of biology degrees and 41 percent of math degrees, so where's the love for their cousin computer science?

Quite simply, it's a marketing issue, Slade said.

Often, it's as simple as a company using male pronouns like "he" or "his," or words like "coding ninja" in job descriptions, which alienate women who might want to apply, Slade said.

"It's unconscious bias in a very raw, pervasive form," Slade said. "It's not the 'Mad Men' era where the bias is completely blatant."

Quick Left's only female developer is leaving for a new job this spring. Alongi said she expects young people to job surf, so she's not surprised. But now she's back to an all-male web developer team, and she still doesn't have the answers for how to attract and retain women, she said.

"It's such a difficult question," she said. "I don't think anyone has the answer, but a lot of people are trying to figure it out."

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